“How do you know they are perfectly lovely fellows?” her mother inquired.
“Because they are, and there’s a perfectly wonderful musician coming and there’ll be dancing and everything. You don’t need any hat, come just the way you are, and we’ll engage the rooms before any one else gets them. He’s the nicest boy—only we have to hurry!”
“If he’s such a nice boy I guess he can wait a few minutes,” said Mrs. Stillmore.
“But I’m afraid some one will get the rooms— oh, I’d just die from disappointment. You know how it is up at the Snailsdale House, people just begging for rooms.”
“Well, we’re not beggars,” said Mrs. Stillmore.
“Oh, you’re just provoking!” Hope said, stamping her foot impatiently. “You know Mr. and Mrs. Goodale won’t care a bit—they’re too slow to care. Oh, I’m just sick and disgusted with this poky old place—even that boy makes fun of it and I felt so ashamed! He’d take us out in his car lots and here we can’t even go driving with the horse.”
“Have you thought about Walter?” her mother asked. “Weren’t you going to help him?”
“Oh, it’s just too silly,” Hope said, impatiently. “You know perfectly well that before the day of the parade comes he will have forgotten all about the float and he’ll be doing something else. Even his mother says he’s “fickle.” Hope shot out the word fickle as if she understood it to mean something very dreadful. “I’ll speak to Mr. Goodale if you’re afraid to,” she added, as an inducement. And as a clincher she said, “Remember, you promised you would when you first came here. You know how fond you are of music. You said yourself that this horrid farm-boy here drove you to desperation with his accordion.”
“I didn’t call him horrid.”
“Well you looked it.”